< Fintech's Most Powerful Dealmakers of 2016

Atlanta hasn’t always been known as a hotbed of entrepreneurship, but when Gardiner Garrard III graduated from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School in 1999, at the height of the dot-com bubble, he saw the Georgia capital as perfect for pursuing his dream of being a venture capitalist. “Georgia was a good place to start a venture firm because we had so few of them,” explains Garrard, who teamed up the following year with longtime IBM Corp. executive W. Thomas Smith Jr. to co-found Total Technology Ventures — now TTV Capital — with $37 million, the bulk of which came from Columbus, Georgia–based bank Synovus Financial Corp. The firm focused on investing in technology that could transform financial services — in particular, banking and payments — well before “fintech” was in fashion. “Atlanta is kind of a worldwide headquarters for all things payments,” says Garrard. The 46-year-old Georgia native notes that “all of the major credit card, debit card, and prepaid card payment processors” are close by: Elavon, First Data Corp., Global Payments, Total System Services (TSYS), and Worldpay. Two of those — Global Payments and TSYS (which was spun off by Synovus in 2007) — are TTV investors. Garrard says deep relationships in the payments ecosystem give TTV an advantage in competing against big West Coast venture capital firms. “I can’t think of more than three or four deals that we wanted that we didn’t get in,” the managing partner adds, pointing to TTV’s “relationships with incumbents that could be very, very valuable to the entrepreneur.” An example: The firm made an early-2000s investment in Pasadena, California–based Green Dot Corp., now the largest U.S. provider of prepaid debit card services. TTV introduced the company to Synovus (to issue its cards), TSYS (to process the cards and transactions), and MasterCard (for branding). The firm made more than 60 times its money after Green Dot went public in 2010 in a deal co-led by JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Stephen Stout, who this year joined Financial Technology Partners (see Steven McLaughlin, No. 5). Recent TTV investments include DefenseStorm, a Seattle-based cybersecurity company, and Featurespace, a Cambridge, U.K., operation that employs machine learning to analyze customer behavior. “We found Featurespace because they came to Georgia to meet with TSYS to talk about using their machine-learning engine as a fraud management system,” Garrard says. In total, TTV has raised $227 million in capital, including a $70 million fund in 2015.

 
The 2016 Fintech Finance 35

1. Jonathan Korngold General Atlantic 2. Matthew Harris Bain Capital Ventures 3. Jane Gladstone Evercore Partners Methanol Gains Traction as an Alternative Energy Source Sponsored by CME Group May 5, 2025 4. James Robinson III & James Robinson IV RRE Ventures 5. Steven McLaughlin Financial Technology Partners 6. Amy Nauiokas & Sean Park Anthemis Group

7. Richard Garman & Brad Bernstein FTV Capital 8. Gerard von Dohlen Broadhaven Capital Partners 9. Darren Cohen Goldman Sachs Group 10. Hans Morris Nyca Partners 11. Meyer (Micky) Malka Ribbit Capital 12. Maria Gotsch Partnership Fund for New York City

13. Barry Silbert Digital Currency Group 14. Jay Reinemann Propel Venture Partners 15. Mariano Belinky Santander InnoVentures 16. Justin Brownhill & Neil DeSena SenaHill Partners 17. François Robinet AXA Strategic Ventures 18. Vanessa Colella Citi Ventures

19. Michael Schlein Accion International 20. Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates 21. Rumi Morales CME Ventures 22. Alastair (Alex) Rampell Andreessen Horowitz 23. Steve Gibson Euclid Opportunities 24. Fabian Vandenreydt SWIFT

25. Vladislav Solodkiy Life.SREDA 26. Gardiner Garrard III TTV Capital 27. Nektarios Liolios Startupbootcamp Fintech 28. Lawrence Wintermeyer Innovate Finance 29. Bina Kalola Bank of America Merrill Lynch 30. Hyder Jaffrey Fintech Innovation

31. Calvin Choi AMTD Group 32. Janos Barberis FinTech Hong Kong 33. Jalak Jobanputra Future Perfect Ventures 34. Sopnendu Mohanty Monetary Authority of Singapore 35. Oskar Mielczarek de la Miel Rakuten FinTech Fund